This invention relates to a housing for small animals, and in particular to a housing for small pigs.
In general, modern confinement hog barns represent substantial improvements over older ill equipped facilities. Great strides have been achieved in the areas of diet, feed handling, ventilation, housing and waste disposal. The improvements are intended to provide a healthy environment in which animals can thrive. Obviously, year round control of the animal rearing environment is to be preferred.
In spite of all of the advances in the design of buildings and equipment, newly weaned pigs are not given adequate care. For example, present pig weaner pens are designed to accommodate self-feeders, i.e. demand feeding. The current conventional wisdom is that the feed intake of newly weaned pigs should be limited until their digestive systems have made the adjustment from milk to solid foods. Inproper care in this area may result in pig deaths, but more often causes permanent setbacks in growth rate. Such setbacks represent a significant obstacle to efficient pork production.
Other areas deserving of special consideration include temperature control and sanitation. Even in cold climates, the temperature of the animal's environment should be 87-90.degree. F., and preferably draft free. Commonly animals soil their own food Elimination of this problem is important.
Small animal cages or housings have been proposed previously. Examples of such proposals are found in Canadian Pat. Nos. 922,184, issued to F. Bruggeman et al on Mar. 6, 1973; 974,633, issued to J. R. Benny on Oct. 7, 1975 and 1,034,446, issued to R. Laliberte on July 11, 1978 and U.S. Pat. No. 4,173,947, issued to J. V. Whiteside, Jr. on Nov. 13, 1979. It is submitted that the patented cages do not meet the needs set out above.
An object of the present invention is to overcome the disadvantages of existing devices by providing a relatively portable simple, more or less draft free, sanitary, easy to clean environment for small animals.
Another object of the invention is to provide an animal cage or housing, which ensures that there is no soiling or contamination of feed by the animals.